Help with Dell Mini 910 is it worth fixing?

Hi, I am new here but I have a Dell Mini Inspiron 910 that I love to keep handy. It is not a workhorse by any means but is good for looking something up online when needed. Yesterday I was searching for something and I got all sorts of strange pop up messages and I believe got a virus. I tried to shut down quickly but when I did ctrl, alt, delete, it had been disabled. I just turned it off hoping to keep the damage to a minium. However, turning it on today I can only get the blue screen with a stop error 0x0000007B. The Dell mini is pretty limited in that it does not have a cd drive and has limited diagnostic tools, although I did run a full diagnostic which turned up nothing. I paid about $400 for this about 20 months ago and it can now be bought for under $300. Is there anyway to fix this as I am not the most computer literate person. I believe having someone else look at it would cost more than it is worth. Any thoughts? Thank you so much!

It does sound like you're infected from your description. The stop error can also be an indication of infection!

all sorts of strange pop up messages

Restart the computer. During restart keep tapping the F8 key. See if you can get the Windows Advanced Options Menu to load. If they load use the arrow keys and select Last known good configuration. If you can get running follow the steps below:

I tried the f8 but no luck, seems like on the mini the only options are f2 and f0. With f2 you do get the last known good configuration but that didn't work. Still takes me to the blue screen. The f0 takes me to a BIOS menu. I know some I have read online suggest to get an external cd drive and reload windows. There is nothing stored on this computer, it doesn't even have Word or anything, there might just be a couple of pictures but that is about it, so I'm not opposed to reloading windows, but I don't have an external cd drive (but I do have another laptop so maybe that would work?).
Thanks!

Buy a cheep "caddie" and install your laptops harddrive into it. be sure to order the one compatible with your harddrive, i seem to remember dell's are special in some way.

Via USB, connect the drive to another computer. open 'my computer' on the other machine, and check to see what drive letter has been assigned to it.

now open a command prompt. to do that, hold the windows key and press [R] once. release the windows key, and a run box will appear. type CMD in this box and press enter.

(Note, if your operating system on the host computer is vista or above, you may need an elevated command prompt. to do this, find the program buried in the all programs menu. it should be something like "start - all programs - accessories - system tools - ". when you find it, right click it and select 'run as administrator')

when the CMD window opens, type chkdsk Driveletter: /r I.E, mine was assigned as K:, so i would type CHKDSK K: /r

once complete, reinstall the drive into the original laptop, and see if it will boot.If not, then it may be due to malware, and this process MAY INFECT THE OTHER COMPUTER TOO!!! so its up to you if you want to proceed.

Make sure the other computer is fully backed up before you try anything.